Friday, August 28, 2009

Reasearchers from IBM Zurich obtained molecule-resolution images of pentacene. They clearly show the hexagon-like benzene rings. The technique is a modified AFM (atomic force microscopy), where the scanning tip is covered with a single molecule of carbon monoxide. This change causes a slight repulsion between the molecule and the probe, which avoids destroying the molecule being imaged.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

We found out via Slashdot, that a company called interorbital systems is offering to launch a 1/2 Kg satellite in orbit for a mere 8000 US dollars. The system is called tubesat and each one is a cylindrical container which is filled with the customer's payload of about 200g.

The size and weight is vary small, but enough for the electronics needed for transmission of data to earth and and small experiments to generate such data.

According to the company this scheme would be very useful for many schools and companies that would be interested in launching small satellites but have difficulties finding a spot in current commercial launches.

A related project, with larger payloads are Cubesats. These have been developed since 1999, with some successful launches and some failures. The cubesats had a price tag of around 80000 us dollars, or ten times more than the tubesat.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

According to a recent report, several companies are already producing large scale cellulosic ethanol. The news comes form a recent ethanol workshop attended by representatives of Coskata, Dupont/Danisco, Iogen, Lignol, Poet and PureVision.the companies process around 1 ton of biomass per day, which is converted into 70-85 gallons of biofuels.

Journal of Chemical Engineering of JapanJournal of Corrosion Science & EngineeringThe Journal of Food Technology in AfricaJournal of Graph Algorithms and ApplicationsJournal of Modern Applied Statistical MethodsJournal of the Brazilian Chemical SocietyJournal of the Ceramic Society of JapanJournal of the Chilean Chemical SociatyJournal of the Japan Petroleum InstituteJournal of the Korean Chemical SocietyJournal of the Serbian Chemical SocietyPolymer JournalE-polymersChemical and Biochemical Engineering QuarterlyPlatinum Metals ReviewOil and Gas BusinessPolímerosJournal of Water and Environment TechnologyCiência e Tecnologia de AlimentosElectronic Journal of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Chemistry

Researchers from Bayerisches Geoinstitut, Universitat Bayreuth, Germany, created a substance denser and less compressible than diamond. It was obteined by compressing fullerene (c60) molecules at a pressure of 10 GPa and a temperature of 2200 degrees Celsius. Attempts to measure the micro hardness failed, since a diamond indenter was unable to make a dent in the new material. The material however was able to scratch the surface of diamonds. It is beleved that the new material would be more effective than diamond for tools and other industrial uses.

Those who appreciate giant structures, tanks, piping and large abandoned buildings, may like these photographs. The plants are closed, unused or in the process of being teared down. Buildings include sulfuric acid plants, steel furnaces and others.

Chemistry teaching websites are often of poor quality. That's not the case for Chemlab, the website of Darthmouth college's chemistry lab.Laboratory procedures are clearly explained, as are some topics in chemistry. I highly recommend it to anybody teaching or concerned with the design of a chemistry teaching website.

I'd like to invite computer programming enthusiasts to view this video about the team that created the first version of the FORTRAN computer language. It's 12 minutes long and consists of interviews with the main protagonists of the story. The interviews reveal how excited they were of working on the (at the time) innovative project.

Even today, Fortran is one of the most widely used languages for numerical and scientific applications.

Whenever something does not have moving parts, engineers get excited. Absence of moving parts means less parts that require lubrication, or can break down, and therefore the system has less maintenance.

Heat engines such as the internal combustion engine, compression refrigeration cycles or steam turbine cycles are widely used, but have great mechanical complexity and require many parts. Is it possible to make heat engines without turbines, pumps, pistons or hydraulic seals?

Yes, one such technology are the so called thermoacoustic engines. They use a compressible gas that vibrates inside a cavity at a resonance frequency. Invented long ago, the first models had poor efficiency, but recent advances achieved increases in efficiency that make them more attractive.

They can operate in direct mode, producing work from a temperature difference, or in reverse mode, as coolers that transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot one at the expense of work.

Composite materials are a material of great interest for aircraft. According to Frost & Sullivan, as soon as the materials improve their cost-benefit ratio, they will replace parts currently made of aluminum alloys or steel in civilian and military aircraft.

One of the research trends is adding carbon nanotubes to composites. It is estimated that by 2020 nanotubes will be used widely in aircraft such as the Airbus A380 or Boeing 747.

2) A hybrid between a flask and an erlenmeyer, called fleaker. It combines the conical and cylindrical shapes providing the advantages of both. It might be so, but it also seems that it might be hard to clean if anything happens to stick to the interior walls.

One of the most common separation operations is distillation. Design of distillation columns requires thermodynamic data on vapor liquid equilibrium of the mixture of interest.

Many thermodynamic database exist, some of which are accesible to subscribers only. Some are, however, open to the general public. The best ones are those who provide citations to the original sources, which facilitates evaluating the reliablity of the data.

Today we'd like to point out CHERIC(Chemical Engineering Research Information Center) from Korea. It has vast amounts of data on VLE of binary systems and a database that includes thermophysic properties and equilibrium data for:2000 hydrocarbons and light gases.200 polymers and solvents.2000 electrolyte solutions

Friday, July 24, 2009

Good news for chemical engineering and science fiction fans. The new Star Trek movie (2009), has a very industrial look, and many scenes were filmed in actual plants. More specifically, the engine room of the Enterprise is actually a Budweiser Brewery in which one can clearly see the fermentors and piping. As an interesting side note, the same plant was previously used as in the 80's Sci-Fi tv show "V".

According to its official site, a power plant was also used as a filming location.For more on this, please check out the production notes from the official website.

Amsterdam is a chemical "hotspot", where there are not only multiple industrial plants, but also many research centers. In this environment they are creating free tools which are very useful for process simulation.

CoLAN (CAPE-OPEN Laboratories Network) is an organization that promotes the use of open standards for process simulation software. This aims to facilitate the exchange of flowsheets, thermodynamic properties between different programs. Some members of this association include representatives of major companies like Shell, BP, Total, BASF, DOW and IFP.

ChemSep: Free Software for multicomponent separations. It allows the user to calculate distillation columns, thermodynamic properties, etc. The LITE version is free, and there's a paid version with more options.

Professor Joel Adams and his student, Tim Brom of Calvin College, USA, announced that it is possible to build a high performing supercomputer for a really low price (less than $2500.)

The device is called Microwulf and consists of 4 multi-core processors connected by gigabyte ethernet. These are all elements whose price is always decreasing.

In order to test the performance, they used the “high performance Linpack” benchmark, which yielded a result of a maximum 26 Gigaflops. (…...The most powerful supercomputer today reaches 280 Teraflops, a number approximately 10,000 times larger. While the proposed system is not the most powerful, in terms of Gflops per dollar or per KW it is very efficient.

A new spiral shaped periodic table is the focus of some controversy. Allegedly it gives a clearer picture of the relationships among elements. On the other hand, it doesn't provide as much information as the classic chemical tables.

As for me I'll stick with Sargent Welch's, because it has atomic weights, etc.

Also note: Why do so many people create computer-based periodic tables? Paper ones are more useful.

In this link there are various PDF or GIF files for printing your own periodic table.Also, there is a file in SVG format for those who would like to edit or personalize theirs.

The Ferrara Pan candy factory offers a Virtual Tour, which shows different stages of themanufacturing process of making hard candy known as "atomic fireballs." A series ofanimated images shows the processing steps that go from raw materials to product packaging. It's not quite the same as a visit to the plant, but it really gives a feeling of what the industrial process looks like.

Hopefully other factories will do the same thing, to satisfy everyone curious about how things are made.

One of its advantages is the speed and effectiveness that we have come to expect from Google. The results are listed by their relevance, giving priority to the most-cited articles, and at the same time awarding a greater score to the articles cited by those most cited.

One disadvantage is that many publications are not accessible full-text because they require a subscription. It's unlikely that it'll replace academic databases but it is nevertheless an interesting service that's free, and available to everyone.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

In NAP's website, (National Academy Press), there are free electronic books (e-books), some of which are chemical engineering-related. (To find them, search for CHEMICAL ENGINEERING) in the search engine. Other topics of interest are nanotechnology, new materials, etc.

Most of these books focus on science policy as well as defense.

Another source of books is Knovel, including Perry's Handbook and many other classics. It is fee-based but it is possible to download the PDF's by registering for a sample subscription.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Timeglider is a flash-based web tool used to create timelines. The creators suggest it can be useful for teaching, research or project planning. Unfortunately very few screeshots are available, so I show a couple of them here.It's fairly easy to use. Surprisingly it lacks some features one would expect such as image resizing or the possiblilty of moving events using the mouse.